“When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience leaves with money and the man with money leaves with experience.”

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Hope Springs Eternal

"Charlton's players should be disgusted with themselves. If they'd put that effort in when Alan Pardew was here they'd not be in the position." (N.Warnock, 27 Jan)

The above quote from Palace's beaten manager, sums up nicely the way many downtrodden Charlton fans have been feeling over the past year.

It's probably a bit late for sudden bursts of lung-busting efforts, but tonight could have been a final nail in our coffin, but we're still above ground.

The season-ending injury to Jonathan Fortune is a huge blow, with no natural central defender to fill the berth. Quite why we have ended up with almost an entire team of central midfielders, but just two centre halves is a mystery.

As Warnock suggested, we don't play Crystal Palace every week and given that we probably need to win at least half of our remaining matches, it's vital we go to Burnley in the same frame of mind. Otherwise, tonight's efforts will be in vain.

Burnley are an interesting case, and certainly there for the beating. Their Cup exploits (they followed up the Spurs heartbreak, with a battling draw at WBA) have taken attention away from their chronic Championship form.

I'll be wallowing in tonight's victory in Palm Beach where I'm headed to get some much needed sleep to a conference. Somehow the in-flight beer always tastes sweeter when we've won, and funnily enough it's my first journey since October.

If there's one aspect of the Pardew era for which he should forever be blamed, it's the centre-back vs centre-midfield imbalance, which was patently ludicrous at the start of the season and is massively worse now with Fortune out. If Pardew wasn't in control of the balance of the squad then he should have been screaming to the rooftops about it - either way he's culpable. Not so culpable as frickin' Dowie of course. The more I dwell on it (and I do, I do) the more I think he was a Palace double-agent sent to sow the seeds of destruction, a mission he performed admirably.

A couple of observations:*I thought Graeme Murty was immense. He was clearly in a lot of pain, but provided a cool level head in a white hot atmosphere.*Chris Dickson seems to be a bit of a hot-head, but the way he set up the chance for Burton at the end suggested he deserves a decent chance. He's clearly very talented if a little immature.*I thought the Palace fans would have given us more jip - either they were particularly unimaginative or showed a little restrain. I think it's probably the former.

A battling performance with limited quality. What is clear is that some members of the squad really do care, despite what we have seen on the pitch of late.Rob Elliot's reaction to the final whistle was awesome - something I have not seen from a Charlton player in quite a while